John F Kennedy's grave at Arlington cemetery, looking out over the Potomac river on Washington, is marked by an eternal flame and the words he delivered in his inauguration speech 50 years ago today. Engraved in stone is the best-remembered line: "And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country will do for you – ask what you can do for your country."

Those words sum up a speech remembered as inspirational, a call for altruism, to end poverty, disease and war.

But that is not how the speech was viewed everywhere at the time. Guardian reporters did not mention that quotation, or much else from the speech, in their reports on the front pages the next day. They were more preoccupied with the weather: six inches of snow had fallen ahead of the speech and it was a chilly inauguration.

Nor has history been kind to Kennedy: his administration is now viewed more as symbolic and short on achievement. His vice-president Lyndon B Johnson, sitting beside him on the rostrum on inauguration day, did not have the looks or the eloquence but, as Kennedy's successor, he did bring in the civil rights legislation that JFK shied away from tackling and he did mount the war on poverty that Kennedy mentioned but failed to do anything about.

The main news story was written by a Guardian veteran Washington correspondent, Max Freedman, under the headline Mr Kennedy Sets His Sights. His introduction is straightforward enough, but focused as much on the weather as the speech. "Mr John Fitzgerald Kennedy became the thirty-fifth President of the United States at noon today in a ceremony whose mingled simplicity and solemnity lost none of its grandeur because the city was numbed by a storm that left six inches of snow on the main streets and chilled the festive gaiety of Inaugural Day."

Guardian article from the day after JFK's inauguration 1961. Click on the image to read the article. Photograph: Guardian

The Guardian prides itself on the dictum of its longest-serving editor, CP Scott, that comment is free but facts are sacred – basically that there should be no editorialising in news reports. That seems to have passed by Freedman, who writes of Kennedy's speech: "Rarely has the anthem of courage been sounded so resonantly or so bravely in recent years."

In similar bursts of eulogy, Freedman writes that Kennedy spoke not only as the supreme leader of the American people but also as "the central guardian of the hopes of free nations everywhere" and that he was accompanied "by the prayers and blessings of generous men and women in all lands where the lamp of freedom shall never be dimmed by tyranny".

Sitting beside Freedman's report on the front page is a piece of fine colour-writing, less euphoric, by another Guardian US veteran, Alistair Cooke.

Cooke wrote his piece from New York, watching the inauguration on television – again almost unthinkable now. The Guardian would expect its main colour writer to be present.

Cooke, like Freedman, focused more on the weather than the speech. He opened with: "Snow swirling from high winds and 12 degrees of frost, the worst inaugural weather in 52 years did not ruffle the smooth succession of John Fitzgerald Kennedy to the presidency ..."

The overlap between the two men's reports may reflect the fact that the two had fallen out, seldom spoke to one another and did not co-ordinate their efforts.

Cooke carries only one quotation from the speech, and not one of the famous ones, but he praises the content and delivery, saying that, without a quaver, Kennedy delivered "the simple, rolling cadences of what is certainly one of the simplest and most eloquent of inaugural speeches".

Page seven of that day's Guardian carried the full text of the address. Reading it now, it seems dated and less inspirational than the quotes singled out would suggest. It does not have the resonance and universal appeal of Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial or Lincoln's Gettysburg address. (Reporters covering the latter at the time did not think much of it, either: it was only later heralded as a great piece of oratory.)

Kennedy's main theme, not surprisingly in the middle of the cold war, is anti-communism, reassuring allies and warning enemies that the US "shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend or oppose any foe in order to assure the survival and success of liberty". He reiterated the Monroe doctrine, promising to help fight poverty in Latin America but coupling it with a warning to other nations to stay outside the hemisphere.

The Guardian's editorial welcomed Kennedy's "brave and dignified" speech, opening with a famous quote from it: "The torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans."

Kennedy spoke about the dangers posed by nuclear weapons and the Guardian editorial writer expressed hope that nuclear weapons could be removed from the frontline in Germany. We are still waiting.

Guardian article from the day after JFK's inauguration 1961. Click on the image to read the article. Photograph: Guardian

It was also cold the day of Barack Obama's inauguration: it usually is in DC in January. Obama, an inspirational orator on the stump, deliberately opted for a workmanlike inauguration speech, trying to lower expectations. He may yet come to be regarded as more successful than Kennedy – not that the standard is particularly high.

The lasting legacy of the Kennedy speech is that his call for Americans to think not about what their country could do for them but what they might do for their country led to the creation of the Peace Corps, with lots of idealistic young Americans being sent off round the world to help fight poverty and, whether or not they did much good, coming back in most cases with an interest in the developing world.

A long way from the call to end poverty, disease and war but at least it is something.